Dignity (Featuring Nick Valentine)
by Falloutthoughts
Summary: (F)Sole is outraged by the lack of respect she things Nick receives during one of his mechanical tune-ups and confronts him about the issue. (Based loosely on a dream I had)
'I go for tune-ups now instead of check-ups.' It had been a passing comment that she had acknowledged but never really thought of further at the time. That was just Nick. He was a synth. It seemed normal by that point and ever since. The same went for any of the other comments he had made on occasion; getting his detection sensors calibrated. Wondering if his sealants would hold up this time. Running diagnostics periodically. It had all become as natural to her as it was for him to hear her complain that her shoulder was playing up a bit of if she hadn't slept too well that night. Why then that it came as such a shock to her the first time she actually saw him go for one of these tune-ups she couldn't say. It caught her completely off guard. It was as if for the first time since that initial surprise of expecting to find a human detective in vault 114 and him turning out to be a steam-punker's envy that she realised he was a machine. Of course she'd always known he was, it's obvious from the first glance, but this seemed like the first time she had really 'understood' it. He was a machine and by the looks of it the other residents of Diamond City had absolutely no trouble with treating him as such.

She'd been walking through the city, having taken a break from the office, enjoying the fresh air and sun when her attention had been drawn by a fair sized crowd over by the local mechanic's workshop. Wondering what was happening she had moved close enough to peer through the gathering to spot Nick sat there with one of his side panels' open, the guy working on something on the inside that had probably become loose. The people gathered watched with great interest – it wasn't every day you got to see what the inside of a synth looked like. She could hear them chatting to each other about the topic and the whole thing just seemed so casual and nonchalant. It struck a chord of wrongness in her morality that made her extremely uncomfortable with the event. She glanced between the people and Nick with a frown trying to keep out of his line of sight. How could he just sit there like that with all these eyes on him? With all the voices commenting as if he wasn't even there or worse; like it didn't even matter that he was. It felt as though the group were chatting about some old car the mechanic had brought to his garage to fix up, not a person they had been living with for over a decade. She looked to Nick trying to read him. He didn't look comfortable but at the same time he made no protest or complaint. Just seemed.. 'resigned'? The idea made her skin crawl that something akin to a medical check-up should become a form of public entertainment. Granted that Nick didn't have any indecent parts he needed to worry about people seeing but he was still a person, a damn good person, and he deserved far more respect than this. Far more _dignity_!

She withdrew from the group then heading back to the office before she said anything. On that note of dignity she decided it was best just to leave before her feelings got the better of her and she caused a scene. Nick was mature enough to make his own decisions in his life and she was sure he wouldn't thank her for embarrassing him in front of a group of people. She told herself to just ignore it all. It wasn't really any of her business after all but things never run that way. Feelings tend to linger and thoughts play on your mind. She found herself trying to put herself in his shoes more and more throughout the rest of the day. More often than not if you asked Nick a direct question you got a straight answer. He didn't have much to hide and tolerated questions about synths and the Institute with remarkable patience given how many times she had heard different people asking him the same set of questions. That said however he was also a very private man. Whilst his nature and thoughts where open books to anyone his feelings and his past where far less often shared. She wondered to herself where undressing before the eyes of the city fell in this split of openness and privacy. Where there any impressions of modesty from old Nick built into him or did he really not care? She remembered that he had been putting off going for this check for weeks before Ellie finally persuaded him to get it over with. That suggested to her that he didn't really enjoy them but that didn't really mean much. Nick was something of a workaholic and it could simply be that he would rather spend his time working than sat around all day.

"Penny for your thoughts?" The voice startled her and she jumped looking up sharply. The man that had been on her mind for the past several hours stood before her, his coat and hat draped over his arm as he looked to her. She hadn't even heard the door as he came in. "You tryin' to get a confession out of that mug of yours?" he teased revealing to her how intensely she must have been staring at her coffee. She shook her head trying to clear it and released the mug, placing it back down fully onto the table.

"Oh, um no.. Ah. Hi Nick. How'd it go?" she asked taking a moment to snap back into the present.

He raised a brow and moved to hang his coat and hat up. "Fine, fine. Nothing too exciting though movement in my waist is feeling better. I see ya chose not to stick around."

She felt fire burn across her cheeks then as they turned hot and red. Seems he'd spotted her after all and she wasn't really sure why she felt so embarrassed about that. She risked looking to him to see if he was upset by the fact but his expression was neutral. If anything she would guess that he himself was trying to read into her for something but for what she couldn't fathom. "Ah-err no I uh.. I decided not to." A silence that she found particularly awkward stretched between them as he just nodded and headed back across the room towards his own bed quarters and, finding that she couldn't just leave it at that, she lifted herself to her feet after a couple of moments and followed him there. Nick was sat on his bed reading through the start of a new book when she entered and he looked up questioningly at her. It wasn't common for her to follow him there. Granted there was no door and he didn't sleep but as a general status quo in some unspoken agreement between them his bed area was his and she didn't go there unless she really needed to. But it was also something that played on her mind that he didn't use this part of the room very often. She could be reading into things too much of course. It could just be that this was the first time she'd seen him have a 'day off' and he just wanted to sit and read for a while, nothing more, but the possibility that he had retreated here out of some conscious or subconscious sense of vulnerability or discomfort played on her and she wanted to be absolutely sure before she could put all of this to rest in her own mind.

"Nick I- I just wanted to ask you.. Are you really ok with being on display like that?" She hated the sound of her own voice as she listened to her words toppling out. It sounded so.. Well actually a description was hard to come by but this whole situation felt all kinds of wrong to her from start to finish.

His eyes widened slightly and he looked genuinely surprised that she should ask – or perhaps care. "Huh. Well, I've never really thought about it," he admitted and it sounded like he was speaking the truth. "There's never been a time when there haven't been people wondering what makes me tick."

That was true too and was something she had neglected to consider in her earlier thoughts. He'd told her before that while his memories of his time at the Institute was hazy there had always been someone watching him. And then when he had made his very first human contact in the Commonwealth the people of the town there had all come to look him over too. She supposed it was really her that had the problem here but that didn't stop her feeling so incensed by the way he'd been treated today. The thought that that is how he was treated every couple of month when he went for one of these tune-ups didn't help at all and she felt an overwhelming protectiveness of him swell. "Oh.." she sounded taking in his words with deep thought.

It was difficult to place the emotions of this conversation. She felt a tiny bit of everything everywhere whilst he seemed neither sad, angry or put out by her choice of topic. He seemed more intent on trying to work her out by the intensity of his stare. Once again she found the silence uncomfortable and felt the urge to fill it knowing full well she was just rambling at this point. "It's just that.. If you were human you'd be over with doctor Sun and he'd pull that curtain thing up or else do the check-up here to give you some privacy," she indicated where she stood. "It just.. Feels like with everything you are, everything you've done for this place that people might have thought to afford you the same dignity by now.."

She had half expected to watch a curl form at the corner of his mouth and a light laugh to sound out before he waved off the thought with his usual charm. Point out that he had nothing to hide or that it was nice that people had any interest at all but instead his features became pensive and completely unreadable, even for her and she was pretty good at reading people, especially ones she had known so well for so long. Maybe he really hasn't thought about it like that and now it had been pointed out to him it meant something? The last thing she had wanted to do was _cause_ a problem. "I'm sorry Nick I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.."

He shook his head finally breaking his silence but not the mask he was wearing. "No, no, it's fine. I ah, I appreciate the consideration. It's fine though. It's just the way things are around here."

He smiled then but she had a hard time fully believing in it. A thought came to her then; a possible solution. She herself wasn't a stranger to mechanics. She'd built turrets and generators for the settlements, had modified and built robots from scratch. Heck she had even spent a lot of her time down at the robotics sector of the Institute – prior to blowing it up - for the sole purpose of trying to learn anything that might be of use to the synths who had escaped with the Railroad – it's not like they'd be able to return there if they lost an arm or anything. She still had a lot of both old and new sets of blueprints and schematics in her workshop bench even if she hadn't been brave enough to work on a live synth yet. She didn't have Sturges's skill level but she was certain enough that she'd not do any harm if not any good. Her fingers drummed nervously on the corner of the wall where she leant against it. "Listen.. You don't have to – I know it could be a bit weird since we work together and all but.. if you change your mind at all or even just want another option.. Home Plate is open to you."

She took a breath then whilst trying to hide doing so. The embarrassment of ever starting this conversation still burned in her gut but she felt a whole heap better having offered him an open ended solution to a problem she had either picked up on or else invented in her own head. Still Nick didn't look like he really knew what to think or how to feel about any of it. He just blinked at her and his smile was polite based on some level of knowing that she was just trying to be a good friend. "Thank you. I'll keep that in mind," he promised and finally she felt a smile at her own lips and she nodded tightly. She apologised for disrupting him and headed hastily back to the office leaving him to his book. The thoughts still played on her but with the dawn of the next day and new cases rolling in she found things quickly settle back into normality.


End file.
